Do you have inactive customers on your email subscriber list? It’s something that almost all companies experience. There are all sorts of reasons why customers stop responding, clicking, or buying from your email campaigns. Your challenge is to find where your customers drop off and create a strategic plan to re-engage those contacts. It costs less money to reconnect with an inactive customer than it does to find a new customer, which means your re-engagement strategies could have a real impact on your bottom line. Here are four ways you can try to make your inactive customers active again.

Offer Inactive Customers an Incentive for Reconnecting

It’s Marketing 101: The number-one thing that gets customers to act is an incentive. This tactic can work with inactive customers on your email lists, too. Sometimes people are just waiting for the right incentive before they make a purchase. That’s why they haven’t unsubscribed from your email lists, but you haven’t tracked any clicks or activity from them.

There are all sorts of incentives you can try, such as free shipping, a larger-than-usual discount, or even giveaways. The important thing is that you are offering an incentive that appeals to your inactive users. Segment your email subscriber lists based on purchase history and then send incentive emails that are customized to each list. This will help ensure your emails are relevant and useful.

When sending incentive emails to inactive customers, make sure that the incentive is clearly stated up front, right in the subject line of your email. Often, people quickly delete emails before opening them, so your incentive won’t be viewed if it’s buried in the content of your email. This is especially true when sending emails to inactive customers who have become lethargic about your emails.

Remind Inactive Customers of the Benefits You Offer

Customers sometimes become inactive because they forget all of the benefits that you offer to them. You can try sending an email reminding them of everything they can get, as well as alerting them to anything new that you have to offer. It is a great way to nudge inactive customers to reevaluate your products and services, which can trigger them to become active again.

The goal here is to rebuild the relationship you once had. When you remind inactive customers about the benefits you offer, they remember the experience they had when they were active customers. As long as you created a great experience the first time around, inactive customers will consider making a purchase again.

Relationships are very important because they help differentiate your company from your competitors in a customer’s eyes. Emails are one of the most personal ways you can reach out to inactive customers, so don’t miss the opportunity to reach out.

Ask Inactive Customers to Update Their Email Preferences

It’s important to find out why a contact is inactive. You need to begin by defining which customers are inactive. This can be a list of email subscribers that have not opened your emails in a set period of time or email subscribers who have not made a purchase in a set period of time. Then, you need to send emails to these segmented lists asking customers to update their email preferences.

It’s hard to pinpoint why someone has become inactive. You can gain insight by asking for customer feedback. Ask your customers what they want to hear about, what incentives they would be interested in receiving, and what you can do to keep the relationship going. Then, listen to their responses and implement the appropriate changes to your email marketing campaigns.

Give your subscribers lots of options. For instance, some people may only want to hear about promotions that you’re offering, but others might be interested in industry-related news. Try to collect this information from your inactive customers because it will help you reconnect in a more relevant way.

Trimming your email lists is not a bad thing, either. You’re wasting money if you are emailing people who will never convert into sales. Even worse, it can lead you into the dreaded spam trap. If contacts end up unsubscribing entirely from your email lists, send them a final email thanking them for showing that they’re not interested, so you can open up a spot on your subscriber list for someone who does want to engage with your brand. Sometimes this can help inactive customers see that they used to be part of an exclusive group, and they might want to return.

Send a Variety of Different Emails to Your Inactive Customers

People get annoyed when all of the emails you send to them are promotional. That may be why they have become inactive. To reconnect with inactive customers, you can try to send a variety of different emails, such as newsletters and educational emails along with your promotional emails. Most marketers follow the guideline that only one-fourth of your emails should actually be promotional in nature.

Also, reevaluate how many emails you are sending to your subscribers. When you send too many, customers become complacent and automatically delete your emails. You don’t want this to happen. Sending a variety of different types of emails helps, but quality will be more important than quantity. A better place to engage customers continually is on social media. Then, you can reserve emails for more important communications.

Take a personal approach to all of your email marketing campaigns to make sure your emails are relevant. The best way to reconnect with inactive customers is to give them useful information that they want. Then, you can use a soft-sell tactic to try and convert them into sales again. Relevancy is key to making inactive customers active again.

These are just a few ideas to help you reconnect with inactive customers. Remember that all companies are different; do what works best for you. To do this, you will have to closely monitor your email marketing metrics and create segmented email lists for customers based on their preferences and purchasing history. It takes time, but you will usually see a return on investment from your efforts to reconnect.